Wary of war, U.S. urges citizens to leave India / But Indian civilians shrug off nuclear threat

Alan Sipress, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post

Published 4:00 am, Saturday, June 1, 2002

2002-06-01 04:00:00 PDT Washington -- The State Department urged about 60,000 Americans in India to leave the country Friday and authorized the departure of nonemergency U.S. diplomats and their families because of mounting concerns about the prospect for war in South Asia.

With tensions running high between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan over the disputed territory of Kashmir, administration officials said they had decided to pay for the voluntary departure of many U.S. officials assigned to the New Delhi Embassy and three other U.S. consulates. There are 600 U.S. officials and family members in India.

"We're concerned about the possibility of outbreak of hostilities between India and Pakistan. And the fact that both of these countries possess nuclear weapons is part of our thinking," said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.

The administration, however, stopped short of ordering a departure from India, a more serious step already taken in Pakistan two months ago after a series of militant attacks on Americans and foreigners, including the bombing of an Islamabad church that killed four people.

In the Indian capital of New Delhi, a teeming city of 12.8 million, people were more concerned Friday about impending monsoon clouds than a mushroom cloud.

Talk of setting up a fallout shelter prompted many to chortle.

"Worried?" asked Ashok Sharma, a businessman who was walking through an outdoor shopping mall. "There's no reason to worry. There's no way either side will use nuclear weapons."

Sharma's fearlessness is shared by an overwhelming majority of Indians and Pakistanis, according to opinion polls, political analysts and interviews on the street.

Many say concerns in the West of a border skirmish escalating into nuclear exchange are overblown. Others maintain that there will be no war, insisting that both countries are simply engaged in high-stakes saber-rattling.

Others acknowledge that nuclear weapons may be used by one or both sides, but they blithely contend it will not affect them.

"They're not going to bomb us here," Praveen Shah, a shopkeeper, confidently said of the Pakistani military. "They'll bomb the soldiers on the border. That's far away from Delhi."

Praful Bidwai, an anti-nuclear advocate and the co-author of a book titled "South Asia on a Short Fuse," said: "The complacency here is unbelievable. Nobody seems to understand the gravitas of nuclear weapons."

The United States and Britain have taken far more grave view of the situation. The British government is drawing up contingency plans to evacuate tens of thousands of its citizens by ship, and it issued a notice similar to the State Department's on Friday, urging its diplomats and citizens to return home from India.

The U.S. move coincides with an increase in American efforts to defuse the tension by pressing Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to choke off the infiltration of Islamic militants into Indian-held territory threatening to trigger open warfare.

Musharraf has said in recent days that he will end these incursions, and U. S. officials are urging India to give his orders time to filter down to the field.

"I have seen indications that instructions have been given to cease this kind of activity," Secretary of State Colin Powell told BBC News. "I think it is too early to say that it has stopped. And when and if it does stop, it must also stop permanently."

Western military analysts say India and Pakistan both possess missiles capable of dropping nuclear warheads atop each other's major cities. Although targets are a closely held secret, the analysts believe that in the event of a full-scale nuclear war, India's three largest cities -- New Delhi, Bombay and Calcutta -- would be on Pakistan's list. India, the analysts said, probably would strike Pakistan's three biggest: Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad.

India has a more than 2-to-1 advantage over Pakistan in active-duty soldiers and combat aircraft, as well as significantly more tanks, artillery and ships than Pakistan, and Indian officials said they are confident that a war between the two nations could be limited to a short, nonnuclear fight.

India has threatened to mount military strikes against what it claims are training camps for Islamic militants in the part of Kashmir under Pakistan's control. India contends that the militants, who are fighting to end Indian rule in Kashmir, have been responsible for a series of deadly terrorist attacks.

Analysts said a 1999 invasion by Pakistan-backed guerrillas in Kashmir's Kargil mountains, which led to an intense, weeks-long ground skirmish, has prompted many Indian political and military leaders to conclude that the two nations can engage in battles along the border without escalating into an all- out war.

But many analysts and anti-nuclear activists argue that a military conflict could easily spiral out of control if India's much-larger army makes a significant incursion into Pakistan.

Although India has pledged not to strike with nuclear weapons first, Pakistan has not. Indian military leaders, however, contend that India would be able to survive a first strike with enough of its warheads intact to mount a retaliatory strike that would hit all of Pakistan's major cities.

But Western diplomats who follow nuclear issues on the Indian subcontinent believe that logic is misguided. "In the fog of war, people don't always act rationally," one diplomat said. "You can't assume they won't use a weapon they have."